This is [concerning wisdom]: the wise one does not take a thing beyond its measure or station.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Five: On Knowing the Station of Leaving Thought and Its Secrets
Leaving thinking is surrender to its Creator.
Do not think, for thought is defective.
If you do not think, you become a purified spirit,
the Real’s companion, innately formed for remembrances.
If you do not think, you become a purified spirit,
like angels: differentiation does not veil you
from the Deity who gives His gifts
generously. What He gives is a descent,
either encounter or imparting, which you come to know,
or writing given by the differentiations.
Through thinking we are consigned to ourselves;
without it there would be no association or denial.
Thinking is an affair bestowed particularly upon me,
for I am comprehensive, and gathering is attaining
Notes
Translator’s note TN4243-1: Maʿlūl is rendered “defective” in the poem’s criticism of fallible thought; it can also mean caused or subject to a cause. “Association and denial” preserves the pair ishrāk and taʿṭīl without narrowing the latter to one form of negation.
